


Call It For What It Is

by Bawgdan



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:54:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27483808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bawgdan/pseuds/Bawgdan
Summary: Pride has a few debilitating side effects: Distance. Grudges. Lack of self awareness. Little patience. Zero empathy.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 37





	Call It For What It Is

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The hardest lesson Katara has had to learn in her twenty five years on Earth is that you eventually, sooner than later, outgrow relationships. Like her waist to hip ratio, sometimes you're too big for the situation you're trying to squeeze yourself into. Which is why she had stopped responding to Zuko's letters. She can't even remember what had caused her to stop their correspondence.  _ You don't exactly walk away from the Fire Lord _ —that is what her brother had said.

Well, Katara most certainly did.

Like Sokka and Aang, even Toph believes that her self imposed exile from Zuko's life is a bit much. 

"What exactly did he do again?" Toph pours herself a cup of tea. She has asked this question more than a thousand times.

"To be quite frank," Katara stares at the red Fire Nation seal, holding the parchment between her index and middle finger, "I don't even remember."

Zuko has done and said a lot of things, none of it ever being worth their 'friendship'. If it could have been called that. 

Toph snickers into her cup, sputtering the tea up her nose.

"And you've only gotten increasingly angrier about it!" Toph swipes at her dripping nose. Tea stains the front of her robe.

"He just won't take the hint." Katara has to deal with her own trauma. There isn't enough room for Zuko—he never seemed to care about the manifestations in her life. She could tell anyone what Zuko's favorite color is, his favorite food, what troubles him, and his insecurities but he couldn't say the same for her. 

"Maybe it's therapeutic for him. He needs to write to you." Toph shrugs.

"Tuh!" Katara folds a fuzzy curl behind her ear. "Too bad for him—I refuse to be anyone's cope. That's what he has Mai for."

Toph narrows her eyes. Her eyelashes curl up, full and thick, to die for. 

"Did you hear that?" Toph cups the shape of her left ear. She clicks her tongue, gently turning her head about the candle lit room. "Sounds like venom—sweet bitterness."

Katara is bitter. So what? She is a grown woman and should be allowed to feel impolite things. What matters is that she never vocalizes her mean thoughts.

"Maybe I am." Katara sips her tea. 

"I dare you to open it." Toph yawns.

"I won't." Katara physically cannot. 

"Fine. Just die mad about whatever it is, I guess." Toph jumping to the defense for him hurts Katara's feelings. 

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Her grandmother used to say ' _ Be careful with anger. If you feel it enough, it becomes muscle memory' _ . 

Katara lies in bed with the letter on her chest, drumming her fingers along her collar bone. Toph had bullied her into guilt. It's possible that Zuko  _ needs _ to write and her silence has given him a void to empty himself into. Not that it ever mattered what she had to say but maybe not saying anything is what he needs. Which also means that she is, once again, serving his vulnerability unwillingly. 

She sits up in bed. The candle light shakes. Her big shadow sprawls up to the ceiling. Katara reaches for the knife she had used to peel an apple and slices through the wax seal. 

A moment of silence for breaking her resolve. Katara takes a deep breath before subjecting herself to his immaculate handwriting. She doesn't make it through the second sentence without bursting into tears. 

Iroh had died. The space between Zuko's words emphasize the frankness in which he speaks about Iroh's death. The language is rudimentary, stunted, especially for Zuko who uses words like  _ fealty  _ and  _ supine _ .

Katara gets out of bed, to search for the years worth of letters but soon realizes in the blur of her tears that she is in Toph's home, in Toph's clothes, escaping her once sworn fealty to another man.

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Katara arrives at the capital with a rucksack full and heavy with guilt. The journey from the harbor to the palace, the sameness of it all is daunting. Red and amber—any different color would betray patriotism. Katara sticks out like a scab. She keeps her scarf tied around her head to lessen the attention. The knot presses into her neck—or her throat is tightening. She can't tell. 

Sokka tells her often that she should carry herself like the diplomat she has become, but she has too much integrity and is far too proud to posture. Katara tells the truth. She is blunt and that has gotten her a lot farther than kowtowing to vapid nobility. 

Though Zuko has done the heavy work to lobby for more progressive laws, his leadership hasn't eradicated the violent nationalism that is pervasive in the Fire Nation's culture. If anything, Zuko has caused a rift in the landscape of their politics. Katara figures nothing has changed. It bruises her soul to think that he has had to deal with the fallout of so many naysayers—she being included for more intimate reasons.

She imagines how terribly lonely he must be. 

Her presence at the palace gate causes a mess of confusion. It's her clothes, the color of her skin, and the absurdness of how ordinary she speaks to the guards.  _ Who does this silly brown girl think she is? _ Katara is inclined to agree— _ who does she think she is and what right does she have to impose herself on their Fire Lord? _

She would have replied to the letter, but the reply is three months late and when she considered the size of the ocean, she decided her person would arrive much faster by boat than waiting for the postman.

After her identity is finally confirmed, she is escorted through the gates and instructed to wait at one of the many pavilions. No one offers her a drink. Katara doesn't expect them to. Iroh has been dead three months, she doesn't deserve kindness. She unties the scarf and shakes out her hair. A group of noble women pass through a canopy of red wisteria. They giggle behind their fans. When they are long gone, Katara can still hear the tinkle of their jewelry. 

Katara wonders if Aang knew before she did, perhaps they received the news at the same time. Wondering so much makes her stomach hurt. She braces herself against a column and drops her bag to her feet.

She'd know Zuko's footsteps blind folded. When you've committed the patterns of someone's gait, it hits like a muscle spasm when provoked. Katara turns to look over her shoulder. Zuko swats at a low hanging wisteria. She doesn't know how to feel other than that he looks exactly like how she left him. This exactness is so moving that she feels the sting of tears behind her eyes. The pain trickles into her nasal cavity. Her cheeks throb. His hair hangs loosely around his shoulders like dark liquid. Bone straight and shiny. Katara is a straight to the point kind of person. The exhaustion of traveling for so long, she ceases to feel it, overcome by the sudden anguish that feels like a burst of boundless energy. Katara throws up her arms to him. Zuko reciprocates, surprisingly with the same urgency.

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Death doesn't so much bring people together— it gives a group of sometimes loosely related people a common denominator. Death beams a light down on the fractures in said relationships. Zuko feels a greater distance between himself and real life. Real life encompassing all of his interpersonal relationships. He has always felt alone, but it was a symptom of his neglect and his low self esteem. Iroh took great care of Zuko during his invisible battle with anger (ultimately his illness). But Zuko now does things with absolute loneliness. It isn't a feeling. This is a fact.

Katara sits beside him near the window of his study. She hasn't said anything but his name after long intervals of time. Zuko has the sudden clarity to see that she is always patiently waiting. With her hands folded in her lap, Katara has this refined, put together type of femininity that doesn't exist in the Fire Nation.

"How are you?" Zuko's tone of voice is much flatter than he wants it to be. Mourning is a crippling state of sickness that alters your vocal chords.

"I don't want to talk about myself." Katara has wanted to talk about herself with him for years. She feels that this is a terrible manifestation of dreams being realized. Zuko is self absorbed in that he hasn't known peace. He has never had to navigate the world in silence. There had always been the background noise of his evolving duties.

"I don't have much to say either." His head is fogged. He hasn't been concerning himself with anything but his appetitive instincts to urinate, eat, and sleep. Food fills the hole of his lust. His penis is only hard in the mornings.

"Then what do we talk about?" She is fine with talking about the presence of death, no stranger to loss. Neither is Zuko. 

But he doesn't want to talk about himself. He wants to hear about Katara. He talks so much as is, for more than just himself. 

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**Author's Note:**

> This isn't going to amount to anything. I just had it on my desktop and decided to upload for posterity. Sorta helped me process my own trauma. I'm trying to warm myself up for a big Zutara one day.


End file.
